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This is what’s been on my mind lately, as I speak with existing and potential clients about the issues they face getting employees to work in CRM.

1.Importance of an Adoption Plan
Along with an Implementation Plan, an Adoption Plan – that is a plan to make sure employees use what has been bought and paid for- is essential, no matter whether you are starting fresh or upgrading. Many organizations simply put everything on hold while they focus on the upgrade process. However, I’ve learned from highly productive Dynamic CRM clients, both plans should be crafted with End Users in mind. By doing so, the project remains focused on how the CRM will support employees in their work and achieve overall company goals. Many times we get lost in the “technology for technology’s sake” weeds.

If you look into the elements of a good Adoption Plan, you will read much about end user motivation and “What’s in it for me?”. Explaining the Good News of CRM may not be enough and it is considered a best practice to explore and incorporate other motivations that may work within the culture of your organization. Some motivations to consider as part of your Adoption Plan are:

Finally, as with any plan, milestones, measurement and ability to adapt quickly will increase the chances of success. Transparency and timeliness of data as spoken about by Satya Nadella at Convergence is everything. Up to the minute reports – pictured below from CRMGamified’s Motivation Engine – easily accessed by all, will allow for decisions to be made immediately. Managers can see what is working, employees can see their progress and improve. Implementing an adoption plan with a motivation engine that measures and shares data as employees work in CRM should add to success for all!

2. More next time on Employee Engagement and what it means to the bottom line. You may consider reading this NYTIMES article “When Employee Engagement turns into Employee Burnout” about how high employee engagement, as it has been traditionally defined, is no longer sufficient to fuel the highest levels of performance

Don’t miss this opportunity to get a closer look at Hurrah! Call Center Week is one of the prime events for Call Center industry with over 120 speakers, +2000 attendees, +1000 companies participating. Awesome new content, expo, conferences, awards, interviews and a mentalist! Yes, a mentalist!

Focusing on case studies, solutions for enhancing customer experience, employee engagement, business results and much more! A week of dedication where you’ll be having over 90 hours of training and development. If you want to know more, check out the event’s website.

As you know, measuring performance is key to this industry. Hurrah! delivers performance data in near real time and displays results in your preferred format: leaderboards, dashboards, dynamic values, and much more! You can choose to trigger key events and showcase them. For example, celebrate the person who broke the phone call record today, or congratulate the team who hit the Call Resolution Goal for the week! And that’s not all, you can also set countdowns, announcements and media to keep people focussed on their goals.

You can instantly share company metrics, as well as give employees immediate recognition for a job well done –one of the best motivators– low cost and effective!

The job of a call center agent can be tough. As a manager of a call center, you need to help agents deliver competent or more importantly high quality service in an efficient way. We all know it is a big challenge but not all of us know HOW it can be accomplished.

Luckily, we have some ideas! The key strategy is Gamification, a concept you have probably heard about. Gamification has been proven to work well in call centers. It helps managers identify and measure KPIs while motivating and rewarding agents for performing those key activities that lead to success.

Let’s bring this down to earth. Some key activities in a call center may be:

Making Outbound phone calls to sell products or services

Making Outbound phone calls to manage accounts and secure renewal or retention of customer

Handling incoming phone calls or inputs from various sources to provide customer service

Carry out a debt management function

Making Outbound phone calls to research customer and support sales process

Gamification allows you to measure and improve activities like number of phone calls, or incidents closed, or revenue collected, which are metrics you have identified as essential for success. Immediately sharing and displaying these metrics, provides agents with a clear idea of the importance of their goals to the organization, how they are tracking against those objectives and what to do to improve. They will also receive immediate public recognition for a job well done. Appreciation costs little and is considered the best motivator, especially in challenging work environments.

Commonly used strategies and traditional contests provide short term results and sometimes cause backlash. They differ from gamification in that they do not permanently change business habits or engage the worker with the goals of the organization. The are rarely tied to the technology already in use. Also, applying gamification strategies is not merely about rewarding individuals to cause a change in behavior. It is also about analyzing and using data to define strong business strategies. It’s a WIN-WIN for both the worker and the organization. Gamification will help agents stay motivated and strive to improve performance over time, while providing the organization increased data, revenue and overall success.

About Us

Founded in 2011, and having presence in the US, Canada and Latin America, CRMGamified® provides modern technology to help companies improve sales and service performance by leveraging gamification.

We offer a metrics-driven approach and CRM add-ons to promote behaviors that lead to substantial revenue growth, increased employee engagement, and improved productivity of outbound teams across the globe.